Just when it seemed Fikayo Tomori had slotted nicely into a three-man defence and was back to his best, he gave away a cheap penalty against Fiorentina on Saturday.
As MilanNews recall, Tomori arrived on an initial loan from Chelsea where he had fallen out of favour and he did enough in those six months to convince Milan to invest €28m in order to sign him permanently. His performances since arriving have earned him plenty of credit in the bank, especially off the back of a Scudetto-winning season in which the defence was the strength.
However, he will not look back on Saturday’s game with much fondness. He committed a foul on Jonathan Ikoné just after half-time which unlocked the game, and sadly the English defender is not a stranger to naive mistakes.
The one against Lautaro Martinez in the Supercoppa springs to mind, as does the red card and penalty given away against his former side Chelsea at San Siro which was harsh, but he showed he had not learned from it after bundling Ikoné over in the box from a similar position.
There have been a number of high quality performances to look back on too, such as the one away against Napoli last season in which he and Pierre Kalulu kept a clean sheet in the 1-0 win that swung momentum hugely in the title race.
He also looked very much at ease in the 4-0 victory against Salzburg to secure qualification for the knockout stages, and he was fantastic in the 3-0 win over Juventus in May 2021, even scoring a goal.
The truth is that to be a world-class defender you need to have superior quality, which must be accompanied by constant concentration and reliability both in 90 minutes and over the course of a season. Tomori is not lacking in quality, however he does need to cut out the errors that are often fatal.
Now we know why Southgate doesn’t pick him for England. Too many mistakes and his distribution is poor..
He’s roughly 1000x better than Maguire.
Even great defenders have bad days. Nesta didn’t quite close down Ronaldinho one time and we paid. It’s how it is. It’s just more eyes on mistakes these days than in the past
Tommori ! un défenseur sans aucune assurance défensive.
trop hésitant, passif dans ses interventions.
conclusion : a libérer cet été.
Dear sempremilan.com owner, Excellent work!